• Which character was it easiest for you to be? Hardest? Why? What insights or feelings have come to you?

• Where was Jesus? Can you picture the scene? Feel yourself into the colours, the sounds, the atmosphere of this feast.

• How is the woman described? What did she do? Why did she do this? She has had previous dealings with Jesus (vv.48,50). Her ‘flask of perfume’ would have been a long-necked bottle made of alabaster. The contents were immensely costly: this was in fact a means of storing a person’s wealth. She wets Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, and pours the perfume on Jesus’ feet. Jesus accepts all this with no embarassment or awkwardness. He is enacting the miracle of forgiveness!

Note how free this woman is to see with clarity, and to respond to Jesus on the basis of what she sees.

Reflect on Jesus’ use of the word ‘see’ in verse 44 (‘Do you see this woman?’). Compare this challenge to Simon, with Simon’s perception of his own capacity to ‘see’ in verse 39.

Is the Spirit speaking to you about how you are ‘seeing’ others? Can you get in touch with the ‘Simon’ in you? And with the ‘woman’ of this story in you?

What is the role of forgivenness in being able to discern accurately?

Is there a ‘plank’ in you which the Spirit is now confronting?

The story of Corrie Ten Boom in Munich ‘

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favourite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind, I liked to think that that's where forgiven sins were thrown. "When we confess our sins," I said, "God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever."

‘The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence col¬lected their wraps, in silence left the room.

‘And that's when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush; the huge room with its harsh over-head lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the centre of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

‘Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland: this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: "A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!"

‘And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course - how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

‘But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze. ‘"You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying, "I was a guard in there."

‘No, he did not remember me. ‘"But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?"

‘And I stood there - I whose sins had every day to be forgiven - and could not. Betsie had died in that place - could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

‘It could not have been many seconds that he stood there - hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

‘For I had to do it - I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "Neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses." I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had run a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

‘And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling."

‘And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being bringing tears to my eyes.

‘”I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!” ‘For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.’

TO BE FORGIVEN MEANS TO ACCEPT YOURSELF

Paul Tillich beautifully describes this in a sermon entitled 'You are Accepted' , which is found in his book 'The Courage to Be':

‘Do you know what it means to be struck by grace? ...

We cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by the stroke of grace. It happens or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

‘Sometimes at that moment a shaft of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, 'You are accepted. You are accepted', accepted by that which is greater than you...

Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’ What difference would there be if you were now to live as freely as the woman in this story?